


Until You

by charlottesometimes



Series: Heads and Tails Verse [2]
Category: Political Animals
Genre: ...badly, Flirting in a grocery store, For a pairing that ends, M/M, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 21:11:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3543908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charlottesometimes/pseuds/charlottesometimes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The dark-haired young man scrutinizing the stacks of fancy health bars is definitely Thomas Jefferson Hammond, son of Bud Hammond and Elaine Barrish. </p><p>But it's TJ Hammond unlike Sean's ever seen him in pictures.</p><p>(A rendering of Sean and TJ's first meeting, flirting in a grocery store.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until You

**Author's Note:**

> A small attempt to develop Sean a little, for my own purposes in writing this verse. Might continue this, up to the time TJ falls in love with Sean, which takes a while. Not sure. 
> 
> Another story in my TJ Hammond headcanon series. Not betad so mistakes are mine. Leave a comment and I love you forever. I'm on tumblr at monsterchildseer.tumblr.com.

The dark-haired young man scrutinizing the stacks of fancy health bars is definitely Thomas Jefferson Hammond, son of Bud Hammond and Elaine Barrish. 

But it's TJ Hammond unlike Sean's ever seen him before. In pictures, he always looks either brilliantly happy or righteously and rightfully annoyed by the presence of the paparazzi taking the shot. Even if he looks tired, he looks on top of it, like he could teach a master class in scowling forbiddingly at unwanted members of the media. 

This TJ has slack facial muscles, heavy eyelids, and slightly parted lips as he lifts a box of fiber bars and stares through it. Even from down the isle it's obvious he's walking around the grocery store half comatose--though whether that's from drugs, exhaustion, or good old fashioned unhappiness is harder to tell. 

Then he sighs and runs a hand through his hair, and Sean settles on unhappiness. TJ drops the bars into his shopping basket--full already of vegetables, fruits, and energy drinks, nothing actually edible--and moves down the isle some, toward Sean, though he's still absorbed in his shopping. 

It's like hiding in somebody else's closet while an argument goes on in the bedroom: accidental spying. Sean feels a tingling in his extremities. TJ is as gorgeous as ever--eyelashes visible from here, the lines of his body fluid, his hair done up to look touchable. Yet he's standing there in a private moment, sighing unhappily and reading nutrition information for fiber bars.

How Hammond and Barrish created this, Sean will never, ever figure out. 

Already, Sean wants him. 

Sean also wants to see that glossy brilliant smile, up close. 

Then TJ glances up at Sean, a quick jerk of eyes that could mean nothing.

Except that TJ doesn't look *away* again. He just keeps looking. He gives Sean a classic once-over, pulls a considering face, and then does it again, more slowly. 

Sean doesn't for a second consider looking away. He keeps his eyes on TJ's face. TJ clearly knows why he's looking. 

TJ's whole demeanor changes. Shoulders square and eyes light up and spine straightens and mouth curls. He dips his head a little so he's peering up at Sean down the isle. 

... It would be blood-boilingly hot if it wasn't a little frightening. It occurs to Sean that, usually, when you see people pull off their private faces to put their public faces on, the faces are variations on a single theme. This is more like two separate people. Now Sean is looking at the TJ from the photographs. 

What does that mean. Who is this boy. Can Sean have both of him. 

It's a Saturday in early May. Nothing huge is going on in the House next week. He has that meeting with Bailey on Monday, but that's about it for important events coming up. He can spare the afternoon, or the evening, or whatever.

"Hey," TJ says. He holds up the box he's holding. "If you're staring at the cereal bars because you're wondering what brand TJ Hammond buys, you're outta luck. I get whatever's on sale." 

Sean smiles wryly. 

TJ's eyes crinkle at the corners and he turns to face Sean full on. "You might have better luck if it wasn't the cereal bars you were staring at, though," he says. 

Sean laughs and shakes his head, because while the line is pretty cute, it's nowhere near as smooth as he would expect Thomas Jefferson Hammond to be. 

Still, he can't stop himself from answering, "It wasn't." 

TJ smiles, but it's still clear this isn't the guy Sean was staring at a minute before. TJ tosses the box back onto the shelf and moves to stand a few feet from Sean, leans languorously against the cereal isle shelf, and tips his head a bit to one side. 

All he says is, "Oh good." 

He smells of a smokey-citrusy cologne, and Sean might or might not be making it up, romanticizing, when he thinks it suits TJ perfectly, like he hunted for years for his spot-on scent. Maybe TJ just smells good wearing any cologne. 

Either way, though, it's good. 

His nails are manicured and his jeans are sharply tailored. The slouchey hoody is an calculated move meant to keep his look from tipping over into uptight. 

It does its job; he just looks hot. Like a man who cares what he looks like, and isn't afraid to control that image down to the details. 

And what Sean *wants* to say to this wonderful creature is just, 

... You're TJ Hammond. 

But that's stupid and shows his provinciality, gives away how Sean's spent most of his life reading about Washington in the newspaper while curled up in the front room of a one-story farm house instead of *being* in Washington, so instead he says, "I'm Sean," and holds out a hand. 

He wants TJ, and he needs to get to where he can make that clear as soon as he can. From what he's read about TJ and from how Sean knows Sean looks (he's been hitting the gym more since he embarked upon this experiment), an invitation will probably be all he needs to get what he wants. 

TJ takes the hand. "TJ," he says. "You new around here? I've never seen you in here before and I've been shopping in this place six months-ish. Visiting, maybe?" 

Is there a note of hope in TJ's voice when he says "visiting"? Maybe he's noticed the wedding ring. 

And why, *why* did Sean think it wouldn't matter if he kept his ring on to run to the grocery store? He's in DC. No reason not to always be ready, now that he's more or less committed to the serial adultery. (*How*? He's got to stop. Maybe stop after TJ. Stop after TJ, if it works out with TJ.) 

(... Make *sure* it works out with TJ, and stop after TJ.) 

"Yeah, I just got a condo off U Street," Sean says. "I'd been too busy to find a real place before that." He wants to find a way to say, without having to say it, that he is a duly elected member of the congressional branch of the United States Government. 

"Oh yeah?" TJ says. "Where you from?" 

"Ohio." He leaves out the part where, specifically, he's from Deer Godforsaken Park. He generally leaves that out. 

TJ narrows his eyes and holds up one finger. "Ah," he says. He nods and snaps. "I've seen you before. You're in the House." 

Sean flushes with pleasure. "Well," he says. "Yeah. Sean Reeves. Just my first term." 

"Republican?" 

"Does it show?"

"It's the hair."

Sean mock-glares. "What is wrong with my hair?" 

"S'peefect, that's what's wrong." TJ reaches up with the hand not holding his shopping basket and gently musses the hair fringing Sean's face. He smiles as he pulls the hand back. "Better now."

"So I could pass for an Independent?" 

"You can be whatever you want to be, honestly, and I'll still probably end this conversation by asking if you want to come over for coffee tonight." 

Sean glances up and down the isle quick, and sees that it's clear. Then he forces his face to be innocent and deadpan. "Actually for coffee, I hope you mean? 'Cause I could really use a cup." 

TJ's smile flickers and his lips part a little in consternation. "Well," he says. "Uh. Yeah? I think I have a coffee maker somewhere. Or we could go to this cafe--" 

"I'm kidding," Sean says, smiling and pleased with himself. And, frankly, charmed: There's something appealing in how easily TJ yielded that point, something contradictory to his flirtatious confidence. It doesn't all quite track. Sean likes that. 

He makes his face solemn again. "Tea is fine too if you have it." 

TJ's smile comes back online and he hits Sean on the arm, snorts a laugh--it's a surprisingly unpolished sound. Sean likes that, too. Kathy used to snort, when she was younger. Before Columbus. "Dick," he says. 

"Guilty." 

It hits Sean then, and maybe also TJ judging by the way his expression twitches, that they've gone from zero to about 60 in about two minutes. 

"Well," Sean says. "This isn't exactly how I expected my grocery shopping experience to go." Sean half wants to add, I expected to pick up skirt steak, I didn't expect to pick up tail. But he's aware that the impulse to pun is distinctly uncool. 

"No?" TJ asks. "Where do you usually meet guys?" 

Sean knows he blushes at that, because the answer is, "Once in a bar, three times in a furniture store I've discovered is great for this, twice at a park, and once at a cooking class, and that's literally it."

"Sorry," TJ says with a forced laugh, dropping his eyes; now he looks a little more like the guy Sean spied down the isle. "I probably don't need that kind of information about a congressman, right?" 

"No, no, it's alright," Sean says. "I just--don't, usually. To be honest." 

"Oh," TJ says. He smiles again. "Lucky me." 

It's been so many years since Sean was "dating." He only has those seven hook-ups over the last year or so to compare this to, and none of those encounters felt like this: Like he wants *this one*, not just somebody. 

"Or me," Sean says, not sure what else to say. 

TJ seems to restrain himself from rolling his eyes. "Okay guy," he says. "You were smooth right up to then." 

"It was an illusion," Sean says. 

"Honesty! That's incredible. Especially in a politician." 

"Well, I've only been in office a year and a few months, gimme time," Sean says. 

TJ snorts again. Sean is captivated. "Wow, that *is* honest." 

"If you like honesty," Sean tries, with a thrill like looking down from atop a tall building, "I'll say that what I really want right now is to know what time I can come over tonight." 

TJ beams, and blinks at him for a half-moment too long, then says, "Eight?"


End file.
